1.3b – Fitness

A challenge of our modern society is that most of us no longer require much bodily motion to fulfill our role in society. This is a major problem because our bodies have evolved to move regularly. The Fitness subsection of the Health chapter of Supermorning will strive for the regular motion that is so important for good health.

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Recap: Permanent Fitness Environment

OK, let’s wrap up our fitness sub-chapter with a quick summary of how to construct an environment for lifelong healthy fitness levels. 

As a quick reminder, the idea here is to make movement an inevitable part life. If you manage that, healthy fitness levels will happen automatically for the rest of your days. 

The checklist

Here are three key steps to automatic lifelong fitness: 

  1. Build easy fitness habits. 
    • There are countless opportunities for free movement in our daily lives. 
    • Most of these are very easy and can readily be turned into lasting habits. 
  2. Create a fit home. 
    • The location of your home is a key fitness consideration.
    • There are also many things in and around the house that can be modified to encourage movement and discourage stagnation. 
  3. Make movement desirable. 
    • One of the main motivations for getting fit is to build a body that makes movement fun. 
    • Use the previous two tips to reach this tipping point and then capitalize on sports and socializing to take it to the next level. 

So, there you have it. Fitness should not be something tedious we force ourselves through day after day. It should be an automatic and often enjoyable part of life 🙂 

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Make Movement Desirable

The last element of our lifelong fitness environment is to make it more fun to move your body 🙂

In general, if you can derive genuine pleasure from things that are good for you, life suddenly becomes a whole lot better. Fitness is no exception to this rule. 

So, let’s see how this can be done. 

Patiently get yourself in shape

Moving your body will always be a drag if you have a low power-to-weight ratio. In fact, building a body that makes movement more enjoyable should be one of the main motivations for getting fit. 

If you have a long way to go, don’t rush it. Just patiently build the habits and home environment we discussed over the past two days and allow your fitness to gradually improve. 

Then, as it becomes easier to move your body, gradually up the ante. And sooner or later, you’ll get to the point where movement genuinely becomes fun 🙂

Sports

Participating in sports is not mandatory for healthy fitness levels, but it can make fitness a whole lot more fun. 

There’s an almost endless array of sports to choose from and you can add a social element and/or some technology to make it even more interesting. Give it a try!

Socializing

Open your mind to different ways to add some movement to your socializing. Although there are many options, possibly the five best ways to get this done are:

  1. Learn to dance reasonably well 🙂 Almost any party gets better with dancing and you need some confidence and skill to get people moving. 
  2. Get involved in a multi-person sport or an exercise group.
  3. Take your family or friends out into nature on a regular basis (even if it’s just the local park). 
  4. Get yourself a fit friend or two. If you’re colleagues, exercising together can strengthen the work relationship. 
  5. Convince a close friend to join you on your automatic fitness journey. 

Don’t take fitness too seriously

If fitness becomes a tedious job, you simply won’t be able to maintain it. As we stated right at the start of this sub-chapter, never exercise just because you know it’s good for you. Always make sure you have another reason (preferably more than one). 

If you can line up several fun activities that just happen to involve some movement, you’re on a much better track 🙂

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Building a Fit Home

Today, we continue on our mission to construct an environment where healthy fitness levels happen automatically. 

Your home is the little corner of this world over which you have the most control. That means that it is within your power to modify this environment so that it directly incentivizes good health. 

So, let’s build a fit home.

Location, location, location

As outlined earlier, the very best way to optimize your home for fitness is to choose a location makes it possible to do most of your travelling by human power. You can make it even better by choosing a location that is also fairly close to a bit of nature. 

I cannot emphasize the power of this measure enough. If you get it right, this by itself can be enough to ensure lifelong healthy fitness levels (and save you a huge amount of money). 

Layout

Even if you cannot tap into the power of location, there are other ways to build a fit home. The first of these is to arrange your home in a way to encourage movement and discourage stagnation. 

The obvious place to start is to make it less comfortable to waste hours stagnating in front of the TV. Don’t spend huge money on a super comfortable couch in front of a huge TV with surround sound speakers and subscriptions to all the latest binge-watching platforms. 

Rather invest in forms of entertainment that involve some movement. Something like a combined pool and ping-pong table is a good example. Another good idea is to get some standing desks for working on a PC or doing other creative tasks.

If possible, a pool or a trampoline in the back yard can also guarantee some regular motion. Another interesting alternative is a dog (although there are many things other than fitness to consider). 

Fitness equipment

As discussed last week, be careful not to waste a lot of money on fitness equipment you rarely use. Start with something cheap and upgrade proportionately to how much you find yourself using it. 

But there are some simple fitness equipment every home should have. The first is a couple of comfortable yoga mats for some convenient morning and evening motion.  

Another is a specialized gym chair with some free weights. Put this in a location where a couple of sets of light weights will easily slot into your morning routine. 

One step at a time

Rome was not built in a day. Making too many changes too soon can be quite uncomfortable and could even cause some rebellion in the family. 

So, take a gradual approach to upgrading your home for automatic fitness. Let the stagnation points gradually whither away and gradually introduce a motion point here and there. 

Over time you’ll get a fit home that is viewed as the new normal by all family members, adding several good years to all of their lives 🙂

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Building Easy Fitness Habits

In this final week of the fitness sub-chapter, we’ll build some environments for automatically maintaining lifelong healthy fitness levels.

Good health does not demand regular strenuous exercise or serious expenses on gym memberships and equipment. In fact, most fitness actions are relatively easy. All we need to do is turn them into habits. 

So, let’s run through a typical day and scan over several simple little fitness habits that can be maintained with little or no effort.

The morning

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I must once again advocate for some early morning movement. This is an excellent way to kick-start the body and get some exercise as an added bonus.

It doesn’t need to be long. It doesn’t need to be hard. I just needs to be. Prioritizing movement as a fixed part of your morning routine cements it as a habit surprisingly quickly.

Next, we have the daily commute. If there is any chance you can use some muscle power here, jump at this chance for free exercise combined with huge financial savings. 

It may seem hard initially, but once you get used to it, it simply becomes the new normal. After 11 years of commuting by bike, a daily car commute in rush hour just sounds terrible to me. Getting yourself totally used to travelling by muscle power in this way is incredibly valuable. 

The work day

Chances are that you have a job where you sit at a desk all day long. The first step is to get into the habit of using every opportunity for walking around. See the previous post for some examples. 

A fitness app like Google Fit can help a lot by tracking your steps and move minutes. This quickly turns into a fun game to see how much you can move as you go through your normal day. A fitness tracker with a feature to buzz when you’ve been sitting for too long is another very useful tool. This post offers some basic fitness tech advice. 

A greater focus on motion can cause you to talk more to colleagues, have more effective meetings, and enjoy higher energy levels for higher productivity. It’s a genuine win-win. 

The afternoon and evening

After hopefully using some muscle power on your commute back home, there is one key habit you must break: the tendency to plop down in front of the TV with a bowl of unhealthy snacks. 

Instead, see if you can replace it with some habits involving motion. Go for a little stroll to process the happenings of your work day, take the kids (or just yourself) to the park, spend time on a physical hobby, do a little bit of gardening, make some food instead of ordering takeout, play some handyman around the house. Anything involving a bit of movement will do. 

When the evening comes, a little bit of gentle movement to wind down is another great idea. Stretching or yoga work very well for this purpose. 

Become a little more mindful

Opportunities for automatic exercise are all around us, we just need to be open to them. If we let them in, they become habits very quickly. 

So, open your mind to all these possibilities and give them a go. Then watch you daily step count gradually climb on Google Fit 🙂

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Recap: Fitness Toolkit

This week, we looked at four key tools that can help build lifelong healthy fitness levels. Let’s jump straight into the summary.

The checklist

The four key fitness tools read as follows:

  1. Ideally located home. Not practical for many, but very powerful if you can make it work. 
    • Next time you move, try to find a location where you can easily and safely walk or cycle and easily get into some green-spaces. 
  2. Equipment. Spend wisely to not end up with a basement full of fitness gizmos gathering dust. 
    • The quality of the equipment you buy should be proportional to how much you will use it. 
  3. Technology. Keep it very clean and simple.
    • Start with Google Fit, add a fitness band if you can genuinely use the features, and join Strava for great motivation if you regularly cover longer distances. 
  4. Friends and family. Because movement and socializing play well together. 
    • Actively look to bring more motion to your socializing. There are tons of possibilities! 

So, there you have it. If you keep your toolkit nicely stocked, it will actually become quite hard not to achieve permanent healthy fitness levels 🙂

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Fitness Toolkit: Friends and Family

And so we arrive at the final element of our fitness toolkit. I certainly don’t mean to imply that your friends and family are tools 🙂 But they do fit in quite nicely in a well-rounded fitness toolkit. 

Let’s see why…

Movement and socializing go well together

There are several reasons why consistently exercising with someone else is easier than going it alone. 

First, just having someone else expecting you to show up does a lot to help you get going when you just don’t feel like it. Often, the times when you don’t feel like exercising are the times you need it most, so this is a very valuable effect. 

Second, exercise becomes more fun with friends. And as exercise becomes more fun, it also becomes more sustainable. 

Third, there is an important motivational element to exercising with someone else. Training partners with a bit of a competitive edge can easily push each other to new heights. 

Fourth, there are several social activities that are also great exercise. Dancing is the best example, but party games like charades or twister also work. Movement makes any party better. Try it 🙂  

Lastly, and perhaps a bit more controversially, socializing while exercising is time efficient. Relationships take time. Exercise takes time. Since many people feel short on time, combining these two seems like a good idea. 

Enjoy the outdoors

We’ve talked before about the benefits of spending time in nature. If you and the family (or friends) get outdoors, it will inevitably involve some exercise, potentially quite a lot of it. 

Hike up a mountain, swim in the sea or just play some games next to a nice BBQ. Some fun in the sun is good for relationships, good for the body, and good for the soul. 

Good peer pressure

They say you’re the average of the people you spend the most time with. Thus, if your friends and family are unfit, chances are that you will be too. On the flipside, if your peer group is fit, maintaining healthy levels of fitness will become much easier. 

Also be aware of how becoming fit can influence your friends and family. If you make a noticeable positive transformation, they would certainly ask you how you did it and, hopefully, be inspired to replicate your success for themselves.

Going solo is fine too

Training with friends is not some holy grail. Often, arranging to exercise together is just not practical. Other times you just want to go at your own pace. Still some other times, you simply need some alone time to clear your head (exercise is particularly great for this purpose). 

Like most things in life, we need a good balance. Find yours the same way all of us do: trial and error 🙂

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Fitness Toolkit: Technology

Digitalization is all around us and its reach will only continue expanding over coming years. Our quest for fitness is no exception to this global digitalization trend.  

We need to be careful though. In many areas of life, the undisputed efficiency gains from digitalization are cancelled out by increased cost, complexity and overwhelm. 

So, today we’ll look at ways to digitalize our fitness in a very simple way at little or no cost.

Fitness app

There are countless fitness apps out there, but, if you just want to get some idea of whether you’re moving enough, Google Fit is my top pick. It’s also completely free. 

There are three main reasons for my Google Fit preference:

  1. Automation. Many apps require you to manually start any exercise. Google fit automatically detects when you walk, run or cycle, so you don’t need to log anything. 
  2. Simple metrics. Google Fit gives you two main metrics in one nice graphic: Move Minutes and Heart Points. These two metrics are all that’s needed to gauge whether you’re moving enough. 
  3. Integration. For those who want to take their fitness up a notch, Google Fit can integrate with the other options we’ll discuss below. 

Another useful Google Fit integration is with Sleep Cycle. If you use the free version of Sleep Cycle that does not allow you to see long-term trends, this is a good way to visualize your long-term sleep patterns. 

Fitness watch or band

I’ve recently started using a Xiaomi Mi Band 4 – a fitness band that offers a lot of features for a low price.

One annoyance is that the integration with Google Fit is not so good with the default Mi Fit app. Luckily there is an alternative: Mi Band Notify & Fitness. To get the Google Fit integration, you have to pay a tiny amount (something like $3). 

Features of the Mi Band 4 I use regularly include:

  • Integration with Google Fit. This is very useful to automatically track any activities where I don’t have my phone on me.
  • Heart rate monitor. When activating continuous heart rate monitoring, you get heart rate statistics for any automatically tracked activity. This helps Google Fit better calculate your Heart Points. You also get a daily estimate of resting heart rate. 
  • Sleep analysis. The default Mi Fit app gives an interesting sleep score that sometimes differs quite a lot from Sleep Cycle. I’ll compare them over the course of the year to see which is best.  
  • Inactivity monitor. This is a useful feature that makes the band vibrate if you’ve been sitting for too long.
  • Phone-finding feature. If you can’t find your phone, the Mi Band can be used to make your phone ring so that you can easily find it. 
  • Weather. You can get a quick glance at the weather for today and the next couple of days, which is quite an important feature for Norway. 
  • Usual watch features. The Mi Band also serves as a standard digital watch with features like stopwatch, timer and alarm.  

Although I don’t train with music, the Mi Band can also control music on your phone. 

This is huge value for the low price of this device. It also has industry leading battery life, even with continuous heart rate monitoring activated. 

If you’re a more serious athlete, consider purchasing a top-range product from Polar or Garmin, but all this will really give you for the 5x higher price is better access to Strava’s (paid) heart-rate analytics (see below). 

GPS fitness app

Strava and other fitness tracker apps (e.g. Runkeeper and Endomondo) are targeted at more serious athletes, regularly covering longer distances running, riding, skiing. etc. 

When seen as an addition to Google Fit, Strava offers just one key benefit: the motivation of comparing your segment times against other Strava users. 

I have to admit, this pure ego-driven comparison can be embarrassingly motivating, naturally driving you to greater levels of fitness. 

One annoying thing is that Strava only integrates with expensive fitness trackers and not with the Mi Band discussed above. This can be overcome with another $3 upgrade in the Mi Band Notify & Fitness app.

In my case, this was not useful because the Mi Band GPS does not work well in the mountains where I ski. I think running or cycling in town should be fine though. I’ll try that when rollerblading in the summer.

Also keep in mind that Strava’s heart rate analytics is a paid option. This extra detail will only be useful for serious athletes looking for that tiny competitive edge.  

For the rest of us, the good thing is that Strava can sync directly with Google Fit. However, earning Heart Points for your Strava exercise requires heart rate data, so you must have a heart rate tracker like the Mi Band synced to Google Fit.  

In summary

This post became quite a lot longer than expected and my Mi Band 4 just buzzed, telling me I’ve been sitting for too long. But here’s the summarized version:

For people who only want to see if they move enough, simply install Google Fit on your phone. As long as you keep your phone on you, this will give you a very nice overview and some good motivation to move more. 

A budget fitness band like the Mi Band 4 can be interesting if you can see yourself using most of the features outlined above. More pricey fitness watches are only recommended for serious athletes. 

Strava is a great companion for people who regularly run, ride, ski, etc. It’s segment comparison feature is an awesome motivator and, with a heart-rate monitor, you can sync well to Google Fit.

Serious athletes can get more metrics through the paid version of Strava, preferably paired with a more expensive fitness watch supported by Strava.

For most people though, this offers very little extra value for a many times higher price than the combination of Google Fit, Mi Band 4, and the free version of Strava described in this post. 

Choose wisely 🙂

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Fitness Toolkit: Equipment

The fitness equipment and clothing market is huge. And plenty of sales come from a rather dubious story: you too can look like a fitness model if you just spend a lot of money on the latest fitness gizmo.

This puts the cart before the horse. The better way to approach fitness equipment is to first find an activity you can really commit to and then add some equipment to make it even better. 

What to look for in sports equipment

Some fancy new equipment is a good idea if it can further enhance a physical activity you already do regularly. It should feed into a lovely virtuous cycle: more activity => better equipment => more enjoyment => more activity. 

Most equipment and clothing are available over a wide price range. In general, the more time you spend on the activity, the more sense it makes to spend money on higher quality.

If you do something every day (like bike to work), spending some extra money to make the experience as smooth and rewarding as possible is a good idea. However, if you go skiing only 2 or 3 times per year, splurging on the best skis makes little sense. 

The basics

There is a wide range of sport equipment for a wide range of sports, but here are a few basics I think most people can benefit from:

  • A yoga mat. This is great for convenient morning and evening exercise.
  • Some free weights, preferably with a specialized gym chair. Resistance training is great for health and slots nicely into a good morning routine. 
  • Good clothing for movement. There’s no need to buy the fanciest brands, but anything that is light, comfortable and breathable will make exercise a much more pleasant experience. 
  • A good bike and/or good shoes. If you can get some free exercise from taking all shorter trips via biking or walking, it’s a good idea to get proper equipment. 

Spend wisely

Whatever you do, don’t end up with a pile of fitness gizmos gathering dust in the basement. If you plan to buy something, make sure it will be used (and used regularly). 

Fancy equipment does not guarantee lifelong fitness. It can only enhance the experience of an activity you already enjoy regularly. 

So, spend wisely 🙂

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Fitness Toolkit: Smartly Located Home

This week, we’ll look at various tools that can be used to ensure lifelong healthy fitness levels. Let’s start with a bit of an unexpected one: the location of your home. 

You might not see the area where you live as a fitness tool, but it may very well be the most powerful one of them all. The trouble is that moving the location of your home is a huge operation, so this is not something that can be changed on the spur of the moment.

However, this tool is powerful enough that you should definitely keep it in mind as an important criterion for the next time you move.

So, let’s see why the location of your home is such a valuable fitness tool…

Cycling and walking

Last week, we discussed four activities where exercise just happens as a nice byproduct. The first of these was personal transportation by muscle power instead of fossil power.  

If you manage to set up your environment to easily meet most of your personal transportation needs by cycling or walking, lifelong fitness becomes a breeze. 

The location of your home is the most important factor deciding whether this avenue to lifelong fitness is open to you. As discussed last week, many cities are unfortunately built for cars instead of people. And this can make walking or cycling unpractical, unpleasant or downright dangerous. 

Luckily, there are more and more places that recognize the enormous economic inefficiency of a car-based society. These places are gradually banning the car from various city zones and investing in sidewalks, bicycle paths and public transport. 

Becoming a resident in a community built for people instead of cars is one of the best things you can do for your long-term fitness. 

Nature

The second post from last week discussed the awesome revitalizing benefits of spending regular time in nature (with exercise as a nice byproduct). Selecting a location for your home that is close to nature will make it much easier to tap into this huge benefit. 

The ideal is to live within walking or cycling distance from untouched nature, but a reasonably sized inner city park is a good compromise. 

Value these benefits

So, next time you’re thinking of moving, really give this some proper thought. The benefits of a home ideally located for walking, cycling and spending time in nature are tremendous. 

It’s hard to put an accurate value on lifelong fitness. But we must remember the benefits of fitness for productivity, self-image and life expectancy. Also remember the health benefits of spending time in nature. 

The savings from walking and cycling instead of driving your car are easier to quantify. Spend a little time to work out what your car costs you every year and think about all the other cool things you could do with that money. 

Then, when it’s time for your next move, choosing the ideal fitness location will be a lot easier 🙂

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Recap: Automatic Exercise

This week explored a simple principle for achieving permanent fitness: never exercise just for the sake of exercise. Instead, set up your life in such a way that exercise happens as a natural byproduct of other useful activities. 

Let’s take a look at how this can be done.

The checklist

We covered four key areas offering healthy doses of automatic exercise:

  • Personal transportation. Think carefully through your daily life and identify any short trips to work, the shops or your friend’s house that can be made by muscle power instead of fossil power. 
  • Sport and nature. Getting yourself a sport you genuinely enjoy and regularly getting out in nature bring great fun and revitalization. 
  • Work. Even though most of us spend our working lives at a desk, there are still plenty of ways to incorporate some healthy movement into your daily life. 
  • Morning and evening routines. Movement is great for switching on the body in the morning and relaxing the mind at night. 

If you manage to incorporate most of these elements into your life, you’ll never need to worry about exercise again! It will happen all by itself for the rest of your life 🙂

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